Quotes About Logic

Kirk: How close will we come to the nearest Klingon outpost if we continue on our present course? Chekov: Vun parsec, sir. Close enough to smell them. Spock: That is illogical, ensign. Odors cannot travel through the vacuum of space. Chekov: I vas making a little joke, sir. Spock: Extremely little, ensign.

If the existence of bullshit jobs seems to defy the logic of capitalism, one possible reason for their proliferation might be that the existing system isn't capitalism...In many ways, it resembles classic medieval feudalism, displaying the same tendency to create endless hierarchies of lords, vassals, and retainers.

Even logic and conversation are really just forms of trading, and as in all things, humans will always try to seek their own best advantage, to seek the greatest profit they can from the exchange.

Of course, this is why doctrinaire libertarians, or, for that matter, orthodox Marxists, will always insist that our economy can't really be riddled with bullshit jobs; that all this must be some sort of illusion. But by a feudal logic, where economic and political considerations overlap, the same behavior makes perfect sense.

It all makes perfect sense if you start from Nietzsche's initial premise. The problem is that the premise is insane.

but in the end, almost all this literature concentrates on the exchange of gifts, assuming that whenever one gives a gift, this act incurs a debt, and the recipient must eventually reciprocate in kind. Much as in the case of the great religions, the logic of the marketplace has insinuated itself even into the thinking of those who are most explicitly opposed to it.

lack of imagination is not itself an argument.

No True Scotsman' style of argument (also known to logicians as the 'ad hoc rescue' procedure).

Those years [as the war progressed] would show, in the American system, how when a question of the use of force arose in government, the advocates of force were always better organized, seemed more numerous and seemed to have both logic and fear on their side, and that in fending them off in his own government, a President would need all the help he possibly could get, not the least of which should be a powerful Secretary of State.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

One could drive a schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact.

The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian

it is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.

A body of ten ounces raised in any scale may serve as a proof, that the counterbalancing weight exceeds ten ounces; but can never afford a reason that it exceeds a hundred.

reasonings on this subject can only be drawn from effects to causes; and that every argument, deducted from causes to effects, must of necessity be a gross sophism; since it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause, but what you have antecedently, not inferred, but discovered to the full, in the effect.

Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom. 8.

metaphysics by showing that these theories are not just false, but unintelligible.

If only one can could know the essential natures of things, one might discover the ultimate reasons why they behave as they do: for the essential nature or essence of anything... if only it were truly adequate, all the behavioural properties of that thing must follow necessarily.

In our reasonings concerning fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance. A wise man therefore proportions his belief to the evidence.

The rules of morality. therefore, are not conclusions of our reason. No one, I believe, will deny the justness of this inference; nor is there any other means of evading it, than by denying that principle, on which it is founded.

When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.

Es evidentemente cierto que el razonamiento es tanto más convincente cuanto más único y unitario se presenta y cuanto menos trabajo da a la imaginación para reunir todas sus partes y pasar de él a la idea correspondiente que forma la conclusión.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence .